


Campfire Choices

by Tattered_Dreams



Category: The Maze Runner (Movies), The Maze Runner Series - All Media Types, The Maze Runner Series - James Dashner
Genre: 11!Verse, Camping, Casual Intimacy, Cuddling, Fires, M/M, TST compliant, journeying the scorch, mentions of injury and pain, movie-verse, newt is dealing with feelings, newt thinks a lot, newt's leg is a thing, set during TST, sleeping, we all know what happens at campfires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-23
Updated: 2018-03-23
Packaged: 2019-04-07 00:10:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14068611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tattered_Dreams/pseuds/Tattered_Dreams
Summary: -from a prompt on discord-Just a little bit of casual intimacy while the boys struggle through the Scorch. Canon compliant.





	Campfire Choices

The Scorch is vicious.

The world is raw, the sun doesn’t discriminate. The journey is borne of need, not wanderlust and the exhaustion of it sears into their bones.

It was this or WCKD.

Newt wanted so much to believe they had found somewhere safe, somewhere they could stop looking over their shoulders. He wanted to believe in escape. He’s given up on the idea of home – home doesn’t exist, it’s a distant concept, something this world can’t afford – but he does still long for somewhere honestly safe someday. Home might be asking too much, but a safe place, a haven; that has to exist somewhere.

He now knows it’s not what they left behind. He wanted it to be – more out of a hope for anything at all – but despite how sudden everything had been and the adrenaline a constant pulse in his bloodstream…something deep, fixed inside of Newt trusts Thomas. He trusted him when he said it was WCKD, when he said kids were being drained, when he said they had to go.

And he trusts Thomas even now. It’s a faith that’s stubborn and unwavering.

It was this or WCKD.

But what Newt realises, walking through the blinding desert sun, eyes on Thomas’s back through the haze, is that he didn’t even make the decision to be here because of Janson or the facility or any of that at all. Thomas was leaving that night. If Newt knew nothing else, he thinks that would have been enough.

It wasn’t this or WCKD. It was staying behind or following Thomas. And he’d make the same choice every time.

.

They would do the smart thing and walk at night, rest during the heat of the day, but they can't. It leaves them vulnerable. The cranks seem to be active as the light comes up and they just can't risk being found. So they endure the harsh, baking heat through the sand dunes and salt flats and they camp as night falls. They sleep in shifts. They start fires in the evenings, but its not often they can risk letting them burn through the night.

They've been travelling for days.

Newt watches the stress weigh down on Thomas' shoulders. He looks worn, exhausted, and so worried.

Newt gets it, he's been there. He questions the other boy because he sees the burden that leading alone takes – Newt has _lived_ that same burden. He was the one expected to lead people back in the Glade. He knows what it is to have people you care about looking to you for answers, for guidance, for hope. But now they've handed that to Thomas because he got them here.

Newt hates it.

He'd follow Thomas anywhere - he already has. But he knows their journey is far from done and he hates that he can't shoulder this. All he can do is be there, reassure Thomas when the doubts creep in; cold shadows with fingers that seek for the chips in their threadbare armour.

“It’s not that far,” Thomas says, always says, though his voice varies in conviction. “We can make it.”

“We just keep going,” Newt replies every time, curls his fingers into Thomas’s shoulder, locks their eyes together in the blinding light and nods firmly.

Newt won’t ever be the person to tell him they need to turn back.

.

Everything feels distant after Winston, like he was the last thing they truly lived through. Newt handed his friend that gun. He said his goodbyes, and he heard the crack of the bullet tear apart the world under a baleful sun. They left him behind.

Now they just exist. They’re too weary, too scared to grieve or mourn yet, but they’re stubborn and they refuse to give up. They walk; endless days that stretch out across a barren planet. Their water runs low, the stale food they found in the mall is almost gone and they’re rationing. There is no reprieve from this. But this way at least, whatever happens now, to the rest of them, they’re…well, not free, but their choices were their own, and that is something.

They may be in the vast openness of an earth reclaimed by natural disaster, but freedom, true freedom is just as remote a concept as home or truly being alive. They’re being hunted. That fact is enough to choke all others and keep them pushing forwards.

.

They camp again.

They start a small fire in the sheltered pit formed beneath the broken tilt of an abandoned building. The sun glances off of the broken glass windows, sending rainbows of light arcing across the sand, the colours dimming and dying as night draws over them. The daylight hours might be searing hot, capable of burning away all forms of life, but the nights bring a cruel chill. They have to keep out of the elements if they want their bodies to last long enough to reach the mountains.

It’s not a big space between the banked sand, the rubble and debris, but it doesn’t have to be. There aren’t many of them left.

Frypan finds kindling and stokes up the fire, his hands shaking and tired. Teresa huddles up at the back of the alcove, eyes glassy and distant as she stares through the first licks of flame. Minho sets up a time keeping shadow marker with a stick and then lays back in the sand, pummelling his pack into shape beneath his head. Exhaustion is carved into the set of his shoulders and the lines of his face. Aris folds himself up beside Minho’s legs, fingers rubbing together in what looks more like agitation than anything else.

Newt sinks down, leaning back against the wall. It’s still warm from the day but that won’t last. He closes his eyes and the glow of the small fire sears through; dancing bursts of red and gold inside his eyelids. They still have so far to go. He doesn’t want to think of what’s waiting for them, or what’s following them, but the sheer immensity of the Scorch is a terrifying thing.

It’s killed off everything else alive, why not them too?

There’s a shuffle beside him and Newt snatches his head up, eyes flying open again in time to register Thomas sinking down right beside him.

He rests back on the same wall, tips his head back and stretches his legs out alongside Newt’s own. He looks over at Newt, smiles wearily and holds out a packet. Soup. Its dehydrated stuff - tastes bad, as Frypan won't stop saying - but add some water and its food. They may be running low, but they need to eat something and these packets were designed for rationing and emergency nutrition.

Newt reaches up to take it, fingers curling around the plastic spoon stuck through the torn opening. They’re sharing so that they can save as much as possible. None of them know how much longer they’ll be out here.

"Thanks, Tommy," Newt says, automatic.

The nickname came out when Thomas saved his life; kicked a crank away from him in the Mall. Newt remembers it vividly. The darkness and the cloying terror moving like sludge in his veins as his world zeroed down to holding off the infected man trying to gouge his organs and tear his flesh. All he could hear was screaming and the shatter of glass with rushing footsteps, the smell of decay thick at the back of his throat. It had been so hard to breathe.

He remembers thinking he didn’t want to die.

Then the man’s weight had rocked and been thrown violently off of him. Shrill, warbling screams had followed the Crank down off the catwalk to what was hopefully a quick death. New hands, familiar ones, had reached for him through the uncontrolled ricochet of flashlight beams. Thomas had hauled him up to his feet, fingers curled in his jacket until his leg was steady enough to take his weight again.

He’d called him Tommy. And now going back to Thomas feels...not right. Distanced. Not what he wants.

And sure, his gut may once have pushed him to jump from a wall, but it also pushed him to place his faith, his life, in the hands of this person, and he doesn’t regret that. So he allows the nickname to slide off of his tongue into the space between them.

Thomas smiles, though. It’s a weary thing, but soft, so quiet. It presses on Newt's chest, twists his heart into a knot and burrows deep.

Newt swallows down a few spoonfuls of the soup. It really is crap stuff, but it’s better than the hollowness slowly starting to claw at his stomach. He hands it back to Thomas who grimaces his way through his share before rolling his body off the wall and leaning out to reach Aris.

Newt holds his breath carefully, allows his eyes to wander just for a split second across the sleek stretch of Thomas’s body beside him, knee pressing into his to hold his balance. He exhales slow and just as controlled, then looks back into the fire. If Frypan is giving him a look the other side of it, Newt pretends he can’t see.

The soup is passed off and Thomas is back in the space he barely left.

The little fire burns low and fragmented talk picks up. Frypan speaks at a low murmur into the crackling fire. He might be speaking to Teresa or just to himself. Newt can’t hear words across the space and he doesn’t feel any drive to ask. Minho breathes words so softly that it seems only Aris can hear him; the younger boy’s head is tilted beneath the hood and his eyes dart down in time with the slow movement of Minho’s mouth.

Even though they don’t talk much as they travel, this kind of silence in the evenings, words just littered here and there, comes easier. There’s a familiarity in this, something bittersweet and nostalgic that feels like bonfires in the Glade. It’s as soothing as it is painful.

Newt listens, lets the voices of his friends - the ones who made it this far - wash across him.

Thomas is warm; a solid, very real weight against him.

They're pressed side to side again and Thomas' body heat combined with the sun seared into his clothes seeps through Newt's own skin. It eases the ache of walking, the chill that evening brings. It eases something else as well; something that isn’t physical or tangible but far deeper. The vice around his heart, the hollow in the pit of his stomach, the pressure in his head and the tension in his frayed nerves…they’re all a little easier to breathe through.

Maybe that’s dangerous thinking – relying on someone else for peace – but Newt isn’t sure he can change that now. He’s not even sure he would want to. He hasn’t experienced peace very much in the three years of his life he remembers and if this is what it takes to feel a fraction of it – he wants to hold on.

And that’s when Newt realises something else. The steady pressure of Thomas's leg right alongside his damaged one has stabilised it. Newt is used to the flashes of throbbing pain up into his hip when they camp at night but right now all he can feel is a dull, warm ache. Thomas’s touch welcome, entirely but it’s a tease just as much as a comfort.

Newt honestly isn’t sure anymore if Thomas does this on purpose or not. Sometimes he thinks the other boy is entirely aware of what he’s doing whenever he reaches for Newt, touches him, turns in to him like a satellite aligning around a planet. Other times he thinks Thomas has no idea. It’s almost a good thing that survival is this hard; it stops Newt’s mind wandering so much. This isn’t something he can risk. They have far bigger problems, and Newt can’t lose this; he can’t.

Still.

He glances across, wants to try to see if this was an accident or on purpose. He finds Thomas trying to stay awake, fighting his body to do it. His back has curved in against the wall but he’s holding his head up, tension in the cords of his neck, eyes blinking in the firelight.

Newt feels his heart tug.

"Go to sleep, Tommy," Newt tells him.

His voice comes out with a rasp; his tongue heavy, heart still pulsing out of pace. He doesn’t want to question any of that too much right now. Right now, in the dark, with a dancing fire between the two of them and the rest of the world, asking questions feels dangerous.

The others glance up and then away again. Their voices are barely able to carry. Newt figures they can't hear his actual words, either.

"But..." Thomas sighs, rubs his eyes and glances around. His attention snags on their legs; the press of them from hip to calf purposeful and steady despite how he’s losing his battle with wakefulness. Hesitance and resolution war with the ever present tiredness in his expression.

And Newt knows.

It is on purpose.

Somehow Thomas just...knew Newt needed something, and he gave it, without thought. He always does; like supporting Newt, guarding him from his own pain is as intrinsic as breathing.

It makes Newt’s heart pulse again. He’s fire-warm, despite the way the night air is a chill that catches in the opening of their sheltered hollow. His blood is hot and quick in his veins, wood smoke in his lungs and an ache in his chest that isn’t anything to do with flesh or bone.

"No buts," Newt says, letting his voice sink low. "I'm fine. We're fine. Get some shucking rest or do you want a bloody pillow?"

There's a pause. For the space of three heartbeats it hangs in the air, not awkward, just…quietly acknowledged, comfortable.

Newt carefully watches the fire, acutely aware of the way Thomas is melting into him, so warm and pliant. Newt swallows. Then Thomas shuffles. His back slides down the wall a little and his leg presses firmer, realigning a little to maintain it though he’s now curled lower --- and then he drops his head onto Newt's shoulder.

"Sure," Thomas mutters, the ghost of teasing laughter in his worn tone. "You just volunteered."

Newt sucks in a breath, and exhales as his heart stutters. There’s lightning under his skin, rich contentment in his bloodstream and something like belonging in his bones. He sinks further into the wall as well, curves his body in so that Thomas's weight can settle easily into him.

"Now go to sleep," Newt tells him again.

If Thomas expected him to protest, to laugh it off, he’s not going to get that, but Newt doesn’t even feel nervous.

He feels Thomas smile right through his jacket. Then, in slow moving seconds the other boy’s breathing begins to even out. They’re all exhausted and Newt’s heart snatches again at the sharp realisation that Thomas was fighting it just for him. He needs to hide his leg better from them; this is too important for Thomas to be doing this over him.

Letting out a soft breath of air, Newt looks up.

Frypan is looking at them across the fire, between Aris and Teresa who both appear to be getting comfortable - as much as possible - for the night. Newt catches his eye and Frypan's pensive, worried expression shifts. He looks relieved, even grateful. Newt is reminded that he’s not the only one concerned about Thomas; he’s not the only one who followed him into a malicious world on blind faith.

He’s pretty sure he’s the only one in their group who feels quite this way about it, about _Thomas_ , but Frypan cares in his way.

Newt sends him a nod. Frypan catches his eye, returns the barely there gesture with one of his own, and then turns away to batter his backpack into the shape of a pillow.

Newt's is out of reach, the wall cooling at his back, but he doesn't particularly care. Thomas is sleeping on him. This is better than anything else the world ever gave him.

He has the first watch anyway.

He sits awake for a while, one eye on the time marker Minho etched into the sand. It’s just out of reach of the firelight, and the moon crossing the sky turns the shadow around the stick, counting. Newt knows how they work well by now; it leaves his mind free to fixate on other things.

In other nights his mind has wandered through all kinds of nightmares.

Winston haunts him in the way someone does when you haven’t had time to grieve them, even if he knows his choice was the right one; the kindest one. He’s spent his watches wondering who’ll be next, what they’ll do if they can’t make it, what they’ll find in the mountains if they do.

Sometimes he’s just watched the others sleep.

Sometimes his leg has hurt too much for his mind to drift. Those nights he’s made the most of the time being the only person awake to rub at it, to silently rage at it, to allow himself to cry. Its cathartic, but it leaves him feeling exhausted and even more worn. He still has to continue on when the sun comes up.

This time his mind doesn’t wander anywhere. It’s too fixed on the way Thomas breathes evenly across the sharp angle of his collarbone, the way the other boy’s body just yields so warmly in sleep to every shift Newt makes. It’s an anchor, a tether and Newt is glad for it for more reasons than he can count.

His leg doesn’t hurt, not with Thomas’s knee leaning into his and fingers pressing into the outside of his hip. The current in his bloodstream is charged but quiet.

.

There’s a tiny scrap pile of kindling beside Newt, and its running low.

They don’t always have the shelter to keep a fire burning through the night, but it’s a nice luxury when the risk isn’t too great. In this hollow the chances of it drawing attention are slim. By the time Newt’s watch is up, he’s almost out of his own kindling pile but there’s one stick left that he aims carefully before flinging it at Minho.

He’d rather take watch the whole night than have to disturb or disentangle himself from Thomas.

But Minho flinches awake, groaning and hauling himself upright. He blearily adjusts, just for a few seconds – his gaze travelling from Aris’s curled form beside him, to the low burning fire, out to Frypan and Teresa, on his left and then finally over to Newt on the other side. That’s when he seems to really wake up.

The mix of tiredness and alarm in his face – something they’re all too used to – softens with the smile he offers through the dark. Newt isn’t even going to ask. The answer will either be genuinely understanding or deeply sarcastic and he’s not in the mood to hear either.

‘Your turn,’ Newt mouths to him.

Minho nods. He hasn’t said a word, and Newt is glad not for the first time that his friend gets him so easily.

Minho is already shoving his backpack along, against a lump of rubble to sit himself upright. He waves an idle hand at Newt as soon as he’s settled.

‘Sleep,’ he mouths back.

Newt doesn’t need telling twice. He’s slow and cautious as he shifts a bit off the wall, pausing when Thomas seems to stir. The other boy makes a small noise in the back of his throat, a catch of breath that ricochets out down Newt’s nerves. He swallows that back and finally settles his head down on the sand bank, his body blissfully flat again.

He doesn’t remember falling asleep, just feeling the world fade away to the sound of Thomas’s slow breathing.

.

Newt wakes up before the sunrise.

The sliver of sky between the sand and the overhang of the building that made their camp is touched with light, wispy clouds streaking with soft lavender through the royal indigo. They will need to move soon.

For a moment, Newt stays still, lets his eyes slowly blink open. He moved overnight but he’s still aligned warmly into Thomas. It takes a second, but he registers the leg against his and the fact that his own fingers are twisted into the hem of the other boy’s shirt from his slouched position against the wall. He isn’t in pain the way he’s used to; his body not betraying him quite as acutely.

He just has to work out how to get up and untangle himself now without disturbing Thomas. Somehow he thinks firelight and wood smoke makes him brave and in the first touch of daylight, he worries about losing what he has.

But then-

“Hey.”

The word is low and rough just above him. They’re all reserving their voices, but Thomas sounds distinctly awake anyway. Newt mentally knocks himself in the head; his mind was focused on other things and he forgot.

Of course Thomas would be awake; he had the last watch.

Which means he chose to stay.

The realisation makes hope snag in Newt’s chest and wanting twist in the base of his spine.

“Hey,” he replies, and he can hear the sleep thick in his own voice. He’s not sure if he’s imagining the way Thomas’s breathing catches in that moment, but he makes a note of it anyway. It’s not like they have the time for this; if he wants to lie to himself some more, that’s his business.

He pushes himself up, groaning – maybe just the littlest bit on purpose – and then stretches out his back before rubbing his thumb into the side of his knee.

“Is it…” Thomas half asks him, eyes dark with worry.

“Much better than usual,” Newt tells him. It does ache; with the distance they’ve covered and the pace they’ve been living at for weeks now there’s really no getting around it. But being able to support the damaged ligaments has been more help than Newt had expected. “I’m fine, Tommy.”

“Okay,” Thomas says slowly. Then he shakes himself and pushes up off the wall, standing up. His fingers brush over Newt’s back, a barely there touch. “We should get going.”

Thomas goes over to Minho, leaning down to thump him across the arm.

Newt shakes himself, gets up, stabilizes and then kicks sand over the remains of the fire pit. Sand is one thing they have in abundance, and all evidence of their presence is easily buried with it. It’s oddly fitting that wiping all sign of them from the planet is so simple when they don’t really feel like they’re here to begin with.

The others wake up quickly, all stumbling to their feet and pulling their backpacks on again.

Newt ducks out of the shelter into the first rays of light as the vicious sun breaks across the world. Still so far to go, and the six of them are the only things alive out here. Right now the idea that there is something out there feels wishful, foreign. None of them have ever been safe; why would the Right Arm be different?

But Thomas steps around him, conviction glowing in his eyes and Newt feels his heart pulse wildly.

Maybe he’s been thinking of this wrong.

There might be somewhere for them, one day, but safety isn’t just a somewhere. And there’s an irony in that, because being with Thomas is about the most dangerous place in the world right now, but that logic doesn’t change anything.

Newt isn’t exactly sure he can pinpoint the moment it happened, but standing in the morning light of the Scorch, he knows it’s more than simply following Thomas, than wanting escape. It’s more than blind faith. It’s more than earned faith.

He _chose_ Thomas, maybe longer ago than even he remembers. And even if WCKD is coming for them, it’s the best decision he’s ever made. Even if Newt never sees a true Safe Haven, it won’t have mattered. He’s found something stronger.

And he thinks – he _thinks_ – he’s not alone.

Thomas is still watching him, patient and guileless. Newt almost has the energy for a smile. He feels the whisper of one tug at his mouth and shrugs his pack more firmly onto his shoulders.

“What are you waiting for?” He asks. “Let’s go.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is not my favourite fic. It feels a little too....lost and stagnant for me. its the kind of thing I may not have shared if discord weren't insisting. So thanks to everyone there for all their support. Hope you enjoyed it anyway :)


End file.
